


Reckless

by emmaacarstairs



Category: The Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M, Soulmates, Worried Julian, comfort & angst, mostly angst, self-destructive emma, slight tw: self harm, unhealthy coping mechanism, young blackstairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaacarstairs/pseuds/emmaacarstairs
Summary: Emma has a nightmare and not the best coping mechanisms; Julian cares about Emma & needs her to realize just how reckless she is





	Reckless

Julian knew he would find Emma in the training room. It was around three am, two hours after Emma had came into his room with a nightmare, and fifteen minutes after he woke up to her side of the bed empty. Anyone else might think it taboo, or highly inappropriate for two fourteen year olds to share a bed, but for Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn, it was nothing other than natural.

He had walked in his t-shirt and pajama pants through the corridors of the Los Angeles Institute, until he came to a stop in the doorway of the training room, where he found his soon-to-be parabatai repeatedly striking a practice dummy with Cortana. 

“Emma?” He spoke quietly, as to not startle her.

The golden blonde warrior whipped her head around, tensing, then visibly relaxing seeing it was her Jules. He knew she had to have been deep in her mind for her not to initially notice him. Despite the fact they were not yet parabatai, they always seemed to be able to sense each other.

“Julian,” She heaved a sigh, then turned back around to continue her sword play while speaking, “I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d come train for a while.”

“Ems,” Julian said softly. He stood a small distance away from her, his wavy hair disheveled & his eyes translucent in the moonlight reflected off the windows.

Emma continued as if she hadn’t heard him, putting more ferocity and speed into her moves. She was becoming messier with her form, Julian knew, as she was overtook with emotion. 

He watched, noticing her mistake a second before she did, or maybe Emma already had and just didn’t care to prevent it. As she sliced at the dummy, the blade came back too quickly, slicing into her own shoulder as she wrenched back Cortana.

Julian made to intervene, but Emma did not stop her movements, if anything moving faster and more reckless than before. 

Her anger, sadness, anxiety, and helplessness was poured out onto her target through the impossibly quick, offensive moves of Cortana. Another slice landed to her skin, underneath her collarbone, this time deeper. 

Julian had enough. He closed the distance between him and Emma in record time. She heaved a breath, surely about to continue, before Jules firmly pulled both arms to her sides, immediately making sure she lowered the sword in her hand. 

“Raziel,” He cursed, “You can’t do that, Emma! Not when you’re sleep deprived, not when you know you’ll end up with more pain than gain. We’re Shadowhunters, we get injured, sure, but you can’t just go collecting scars like this! I won’t let you.” 

Emma looked at him, and only then was he able to fully take inventory of the blueish-purple tinting under her eyes from lack of sleep, the quiver of her lip she was biting until it turned white, to keep back the tsunami of emotions he knew threatened to drown her.

“There’s nothing for you to let me do, Jules. I can take care of myself.” Her voice was firm, but she felt heavy with an unidentifiable, crushing weight in her chest.

He knew he couldn’t control her, he didn’t want to or try to. But he felt the same sense of helplessness watching her with her training, as she continuously became more & more careless with her scars. 

She usually wasn’t sloppy, she refused to be sloppy with all the training she worked so consistently on to perfect. Emma was pushing herself to a dangerous point now, and he needed to make sure she stopped, that she recognized the extent of what she was doing to herself.

“Ems, I know that. And I’m not questioning your bravery or independence. But this is not healthy. This is not how to take care of yourself.”

She stood relatively still, exhaling long breaths while Julian examined the cuts on her shoulder and collarbone, as she also momentarily took the time to fixate on how much taller than her he now was.

He must of had a growth spurt, she mused, and Emma couldn’t help but frown in the hazy light of the night time, thinking about the amount of girls that seemed to notice him lately because of it. 

Julian reached around for something, and Emma numbly recognized his voice asking where she put her stele. She didn’t have it with her, she replied, she left it in her room. Julian cursed once again, and as he quickly jogged from the room to find his, Emma turned back to the dummy, Cortana still in hand.

She planned to get in a few more strikes, just a few more moves, before she swayed from exhaustion, her knees threatening to buckle under her. Cortana felt heavy in her hand, the sword telling her she needed to stop, to put it down for the night. Emma didn’t plan to listen; but as she raised the sword again, her arm strained, causing it to clatter to the floor.

Julian returned right as the sword fell, as Emma dejectedly turned and slammed her back against the dummy, sliding to the floor. The two teenagers silhouetted by the moonlight were surrounded by the suffocating tension of unspoken feelings, pushed down emotions. They were also both only in the start of their teenage years now, not adults, and certainly not kids. That’s the problem, Emma thought bitterly, dealing with grief has no time limit. 

She watched as her Jules gently cradled her wrist to his chest, drawing an iratze on her sun kissed skin. The stinging of the stele hardly registered to her, and she was starting to once again feel the physical pain that came with holding back tears, the strain it put on her emotionally. 

Emma had originally gone to Julian’s room after she woke up with a nightmare, a frequent one. Her subconscious had come up with a variety of ways her parents’ death went down, played out dozens of situations for her of what happened in their last moments before they died. 

It was a psychological torture that her own brain used against her as she slept. 

That night had been a particularly horrible one, and Emma had woken up gasping for air, clawing to get free of the bed sheets she had tangled herself in, entrapped herself with. Though residing as she came back to reality, she could still hear the waves rushing in her ears, along with the pleas from her parents for her to come & save them.

And Emma couldn’t, no matter what she did, Emma couldn’t reach those voices, she couldn’t reach her mom and dad. 

Julian had woken up as soon as the door to his room was opened, despite the bare minimal noise made. 

He hadn’t spoken, just sat up against his array of pillows as she had walked over to the side of the bed he never slept on, her unofficial space. She had climbed under the covers, hair splayed out against the pillow as she lay back and turned her head to look at him.

Jules usually didn’t sleep with a shirt, but he put one on on the nights Emma came to stay with him. She had watched as he reached over into his top nightstand drawer to fish out a black t-shirt. Jules had pulled it over his head, his mess of brown waves as Emma studied his face, trying not to look at the expanse of his, albeit wiry, visible muscles. 

Julian then had pulled the duvet up over both of them, Emma’s arm outstretched in the space left between the two of them. He had carefully traced the reassurance against her forearm,

I-M-H-E-R-E

to which Emma had spoken aloud a soft, “I know.” And that was it as he watched as her eyes drifted shut, her fingers still touching the tips of his.

The peaceful state of mind hadn’t lasted, though, and Emma had ended up resigning herself to the training room sometime around 2:30 am. She had carefully extracted herself from her soon-to-be parabatai’s bed, still in her tank top, slipping on a pair of Julian’s sweatpants which she pulled tighter & double knotted the strings of the waistband to fit her snuggly. 

After, Emma started to make the trek back to her room to grab Cortana. That’s how she had ended up in the training room at 3:00 am

Sharply brought back to the present by Julian’s hand brushing a stray piece of blonde hair back, she leaned into his palm resting against her cheek.

“Scars are not repentance, Emma.” He said, tracing her jawbone lightly with his fingers. 

“Something has to be.” She spoke quietly. Her voice was raw and real and exhausted.

“I know that’s what you think.” Julian’s voice was low, “but the potential of losing you is higher than the potential of slashing away your nightmares and intrusive thoughts.”

Emma looked up at him, really looked at him, to his heart beating in his chest and his soul shining through his eyes.

“Then what else do I have?” Her voice caught on the end, a crack in her exterior. 

“You have me.” He replied, “Always have, Em, always will.” 

“I’m sorry.” She choked, as Jules wrapped his arm around her, pulling her against him as Emma lay her head on his shoulder.

“You’ll be alright. Maybe not now, but you will be. I promise you.” He said into her hair. They were both still so young, but the aging of his soul had happened a long time ago. 

“Jules?”

“Yeah?”

“Not to be sappy, but you know how much I need you, right? You know I couldn’t be without you. You keep me together.” Vulnerability crept into her voice.

“It’s the same for me, Emma. It’s how we work. I love you, you know.” And this time, his voice seemed to catch on the end, cracking with something unknown. 

Emma was hoping he didn’t detect the heat that crept into her face, the knot in her stomach that was starting to come with her Julian and those three words.

“And I love you, Jules.” 

She adjusted her head against his shoulder and Julian’s arm tightened around her. For a while they stayed like that, just leaning against each other. Two hearts beating & breathing, synchronized, from the late hours of the night to the early hours of the morning.


End file.
